SHORT SHRIFT
Clare Short's resignation as Overseas Development minister from Tony Blair's cabinet protests that assurances given her about the role of the United Nations in the redevelopment of post war Iraq were breached. But it is naïve to think that the military occupation of Iraq is made legitimate by the presence of the United Nations (UN). As a fallback position, the desire of left-wingers like Short to restrain US power with the UN misses the point. The United Nations was created to legitimate US reconstruction of Europe and domination of the world. It is not a vehicle for positive change. Short's weakness was that she was willing to swallow her anti-militarist principles in order to play lady bountiful with the Overseas Development Agency's budget.
SOCIAL WORKERS ACCUSED OF ABUSE
In Ayrshire a twenty-three year old woman is suing the local authority for taking her from her family home more than a decade ago to protect her from child abuse. The case was one of the tragedies of the Child Abuse panics of the early nineties, when social workers - under the influence of evangelist groups - became convinced that abuse was widespread. Children were taken into care in the dozens, first in Cleveland, then in Orkney and South Oxfordshire.
The Ayrshire woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was one of the cousins of children who were examined for abuse before they were all taken into protective custody. Though no evidence of abuse was shown the children were kept 'in care'. The woman's mother said: 'Imagine what it would feel like to have your child taken away from you, not to see her for a year and to have only limited supervised contact for another four. This matter devastated my whole family.' Ironically, the social workers who took the action believed that they were giving unheard children a voice.
OIL ON TROUBLED WATERS
Christian Aid produced a report this week that argues that 'for many developing countries, oil reserves are more likely to prove a curse than a blessing' (Fuelling poverty: Oil, War and corruption, p 3-4). The report - fronted by film star Joseph Fiennes - dwells on the irony that oil-rich countries seem to be terribly poor, as well as being troubled by conflict and poor government.
The report highlights a real problem not of oil but of world economic development under the monopoly of the advanced capitalist powers. Once the advanced powers had consolidated a world market, development took place in the rest of the world only in so far as it suited the already developed economies. That meant that later developing countries would be pushed towards one-sided growth, providing those raw materials that were needed by the developed economies.
Be that as it may, it is quite wrong to say that oil is the problem, or as the report argues 'the global economy's addiction to oil - its drug of choice - has done more than anything else to skew the world's priorities' (p3-4). It is not oil that creates poverty in less developed countries, but the absence of a more rounded economic growth. Still more problematic is the report's demand that oil wealth be kept in trust for the people - a formula surprisingly similar to that used by the US administration in Iraq.
There is something perverse about western-based charities telling oil-rich countries that they should hand over their resources to be run by 'disinterested' fund managers. The Christian message that the quest for riches will leave you spiritually poor is open to the charge that it is convenient to the already wealthy to celebrate the simple poverty of the less fortunate.
-- James Heartfield